Darling shut the casket and slipped it into an inner breast-pocket of his reefer. He turned slowly toward the sea and the boat, with a studied expression of puzzled pity on his face.
"Some poor fellow who has stepped off the cliff," he said. "I never saw him before—but the sight of him shook me a bit. He has been here quite awhile, I should say—yes, through thaw and frost, frost and thaw. Aye, and the crabs have been at him, poor devil! I suppose we should bury him; but there is no place here to dig a grave."
"Come aboard, sir! Come aboard wid ye!" exclaimed Wick, in a trembling voice. "It bain't no affair of our'n, sir—an' there bes the divil's own luck in finding a dead man unexpected."
Mr. Darling crossed the land-wash without another word, waded knee-deep into the tide, and climbed aboard the boat. George Wick poled the bully clear of the surf with one of the oars, then jumped forward and hoisted the red sail. Darling drew his chart from his pocket, examined it, then raised his glasses and studied the coast-line to the southward. The wind was light, but dead on shore. The bully hauled across it cleverly. A whitish gray haze stood along the sky-line to the east.
"We'll be havin' thick weather afore sun-down, sir, wid this wind holdin'," said Wick.
Darling nodded. "We must be getting pretty close to Chance Along," he said. "Yes, there is smoke. Can you see it?"
George could not make it out with his unassisted eyes, but through the glasses he saw the blue reek of wood-smoke above a distant point of the coast easily enough. An hour later the bully threaded the rocks off Squid Beach. Dick Lynch had spoken of these rocks when the rum was warm in his head, in the tap-room of the Ship Ahoy, and Darling had marked them on his chart.
"We are within two miles of it," said Darling, his voice husky with emotion at thought of Flora Lockhart.
George Wick turned his face toward the east and the white wall of fog that now rolled upon the gray water within a mile of the coast.
"Aye, sir; but we'll not be makin' it afore the fog catches us," he replied.